Researchers from the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), in collaboration with Fujifilm Corporation, succeeded in elucidating, on the atomic level, reaction mechanisms of the reductive decomposition and binding ...

A new carbon cycling model developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory better accounts for the carbon dioxide-releasing activity of microbes in the ground, improving scientists' understanding ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Yellow leaves on banana plants give off a blue glow when viewed under UV light. This luminescence comes from decomposition products of chlorophyll, the substance that makes leaves green.

In an advance toward the first portable device for detecting human bodies buried in disasters and at crime scenes, scientists today report early results from a project to establish the chemical fingerprint of death. Speaking ...

Natto, the Japanese breakfast dish of fermented soybeans, has a smell likened to sweaty feet but researchers have come up with an unlikely way of making it less whiffy—using bacteria from Chinese dust clouds.

How much carbon is stored in the organic soils of tropical wetlands is becoming an important question as erosion, agriculture, and global climate change slowly set into motion a series of processes that could potentially ...

When it comes to studying microbial communities in soil, the smaller the sample, the better. Only by approaching the scale at which microbes interact and function, the micron scale, can scientists understand how the community ...

Decomposition

Decomposition (or rotting) is the process by which organic material is broken down into simpler forms of matter. The process is essential for recycling the finite matter that occupies physical space in the biome. Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death. Although no two organisms decompose in the same way, they all undergo the same sequential stages of decomposition. The science which studies decomposition is generally referred to as taphonomy from the Greek word taphos, meaning tomb.

One can differentiate abiotic and biotic decomposition or biodegradation. The former one means "degradation of a substance by chemical or physical processes, eg hydrolysis). The latter one means "the metabolic breakdown of materials into simpler components by living organisms", typically by microorganisms.